The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1887-03-19

IerlDg ana loving wife. THESE are used
as mere hints of illustrations-not as
explanations of the sacrifice of Christ.
THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY.
Even the most conservative confess
sions qualify their statement of the
resurrection of the physical body with
the statement that that body shall have
different qualities, that is, that it shall
be changed into what st. Paul would
call spiritual body. But the old be-
lief is directly contrary to every analogy
which nature yields. She knows no
going back of life to pick up bodies
once discarded. She leaves the larva in
the cocoon and brings out the beautiful
butterfly. She drops the seed in the
ground and raises the flower. At the
core OF this doctrine is the world-old
faith in Immortality; and swathing
this innermost faith, there is the en-
wrapping belief that the life beyond
the grave is not a purely spiritual ex-
istence, but an existence in which the
spirit clothes itself with some form of
body. Most educated teachers thus
present this belief to- day. All educated
teachers have for a long time so pre-
sented this belief as to lead inevitably
back to this simple conception. 1t can
be shown that the New Testament doc
trine or teaching is not of rising again
of the old body, but of the rising up of
man into new body. All that the
human heart Graves in clinging SO te-
naciously to this doctrine is found in
tact in the belief that we live again,
not merely as disembodied ghostly ex-
istences but in bodies which, however,
refined and spiritualized, preserves the
Individual identity. If you believe in
life to come, you are forced to believe
in a life that, in some way, builds for
itself body, however spiritualized.
Nature knows no pure spirits. Life
always clothes itself in some shape.
True ghosts always wrap themselves in
some sort of bodies. Real spirits al
ways materialize. The old Greek no
ton of shades was powerless over
mems souls, because it was so unreal.
we shall know each other there.
Given body it must be the same
body in all that establishes the identity
of the individual whatever the change
in its materials
FUTURE PUNISHMENT.
whatever the horrors of the ortho-
dox hell, be it noted, that it is far more
dogma of conventional religion than
doctrine of the creed; dreadful
dream of the popular imagination,
rather than deliberate official pro-
nouncement Of the churches. The two
great Catholic creeds the apostles and
the Nicene creedS- I'm nothing what
ever on the question of future punish
ment. There is no official doctrine of
hell in the English church, nor in the
, Protestant Episcopal church in the
United States-God be praised. 9th
er churches, like the Methodist Episco-
} pal church have maintained the same
silences EHe1 the Scottish Confession
of Faith, and the Heidelberg catechism
speak only in general terms. As usual
the Westminster Confession is the one
body of divinity (D which does not hes
itate to formulate in hard, rigid dogma
the opinion which has been held by the
mass of men, as doctrine of Christian
ity. The non elect are "foreordained
unto everlasting death" The end OF, the
judgment day is, "for the manifesto
ton of \ x y Il his ms
tice in the damnation of the reprobate
who shall be cast into eternal torment.
''But for the Evangelical Alliance we
might be able to say that the few Off
cial utterances on this painful subject
have been by comparatively obscure
churches, or in past centuries. Alas,
that the one organization which, in
Professionalism, has attempted to bring
the churches together on the ground of
a common Christianity, saw fit to in
clude among its nine articles of faith,
one which declares the eternal punish
ment of the wicked
"What an awful blasphemy against
God is such belief What would
be thought of a civilized govern
ment which subjected even the most
fiendish dynamiteur to sentence that
remanded him to the rack and thumb
screws daily, and which ordered him
to be kept from dying, that this pun
ishment might be continued through
his natural term of life ? But this
supposed divine decree ordered not one
uttermost criminal alone, but, myriads
of average human beings to such a
fate. Ordinary sins entailed this doom
as well as monstrosities of crime. The
pretty innocent babes in their cradles,
cooling in unconscious bliss of being
on dying, dropped in this hell. The
hosts of the heather, who, by accident
of their birth, never heard of the one
alone secret of salvation, though walk
ing ever so carefully after the light
which lighteth every man that cometh
into the world walked surely into this